Diehard admirers will probably love the homespun stickiness and background secrets revealed; others should pass.
Number eight in Chiaverini’s Elm Creek Quilt series delivers predictable yuletide cheer and saccharine sentiments.
Awkwardly inserted into the series’ time frame, this slim holiday offering takes place a year and a half after The Quilter’s Apprentice (1999) began with widowed Sylvia Bergstrom Compson’s reluctant return to the family home she abandoned a half-century earlier, in the middle of her successful partnership with Sarah McClure in a quilting school, but before Sylvia’s marriage to dapper old Andrew in The Master Quilter (2004). It’s Sylvia’s first Christmas at Elm Creek Manor in 50 years. Sarah and husband Matt, who tends the property’s orchards, are staying with her rather than visiting Sarah’s estranged mother. Nursing her own regrets about family quarrels, Sylvia urges Sarah to reconcile with her mother, but she refuses and heads off to the attic. Long-stowed decorations and an unfinished Christmas quilt bring back Sylvia’s suppressed memories of perfect Bergstrom Christmases past. Flashbacks move from scenes of her girlhood to the final, tragic Christmas she spent at the manor as a young woman. She learns from her dying mother how to make the famous Bergstrom apple strudel, discovers what true charity is during the Great Depression, competes fiercely with older sister Claudia, pieces together the Christmas quilt, chops down a Christmas tree with new husband James and waits for James and her brother Richard to return from WWII. (Those who have read the earlier novels know that they never do.) Intended to evoke the charms of Simpler Times, the novel is a sappy concoction of conventional wisdom and lessons learned. Previous Elm Creek Quilt installments offered solid, diverse characters and plots relevant to contemporary readers; this slapdash effort seems more a holiday project conceived for fans than a story needing to be told.
Diehard admirers will probably love the homespun stickiness and background secrets revealed; others should pass.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-7432-8657-X
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2005
These letters from some important executive Down Below, to one of the junior devils here on earth, whose job is to corrupt mortals, are witty and written in a breezy style seldom found in religious literature. The author quotes Luther, who said: "The best way to drive out the devil, if he will not yield to texts of Scripture, is to jeer and flout him, for he cannot bear scorn." This the author does most successfully, for by presenting some of our modern and not-so-modern beliefs as emanating from the devil's headquarters, he succeeds in making his reader feel like an ass for ever having believed in such ideas. This kind of presentation gives the author a tremendous advantage over the reader, however, for the more timid reader may feel a sense of guilt after putting down this book. It is a clever book, and for the clever reader, rather than the too-earnest soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1942
ISBN: 0060652934
Page Count: 53
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1943
Hoffman (The Red Garden, 2011, etc.) births literature from tragedy: the destruction of Jerusalem's Temple, the siege of Masada and the loss of Zion.
This is a feminist tale, a story of strong, intelligent women wedded to destiny by love and sacrifice. Told in four parts, the first comes from Yael, daughter of Yosef bar Elhanan, a Sicarii Zealot assassin, rejected by her father because of her mother's death in childbirth. It is 70 CE, and the Temple is destroyed. Yael, her father, and another Sicarii assassin, Jachim ben Simon, and his family flee Jerusalem. Hoffman's research renders the ancient world real as the group treks into Judea's desert, where they encounter Essenes, search for sustenance and burn under the sun. There too Jachim and Yael begin a tragic love affair. At Masada, Yael is sent to work in the dovecote, gathering eggs and fertilizer. She meets Shirah, her daughters, and Revka, who narrates part two. Revka's husband was killed when Romans sacked their village. Later, her daughter was murdered. At Masada, caring for grandsons turned mute by tragedy, Revka worries over her scholarly son-in-law, Yoav, now consumed by vengeance. Aziza, daughter of Shirah, carries the story onward. Born out of wedlock, Aziza grew up in Moab, among the people of the blue tunic. Her passion and curse is that she was raised as a warrior by her foster father. In part four, Shirah tells of her Alexandrian youth, the cherished daughter of a consort of the high priests. Shirah is a keshaphim, a woman of amulets, spells and medicine, and a woman connected to Shechinah, the feminine aspect of God. The women are irretrievably bound to Eleazar ben Ya'ir, Masada's charismatic leader; Amram, Yael's brother; and Yoav, Aziza's companion and protector in battle. The plot is intriguingly complex, with only a single element unresolved. An enthralling tale rendered with consummate literary skill.
Pub Date: Oct. 4, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-4516-1747-4
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: April 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2011
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